Monday, January 23, 2012

Democracy is just a new name for plutocracy

From two different vantage points, Naidu and Reddy
have now been espousing the cause of the farmers in Andhra Pradesh. To say that
the espousal of the cause of the farmers is an electoral gambit is stating the
obvious. Electoral politics by their very nature demand that political
parties and their leaders be in touch with their constituents.
Irrespective of the next election in Andhra Pradesh being mid-term or on
schedule, it is increasingly clear that the separate Telangana is not happening
before that. … So what does this tell us about democracy? It tells
us that democracy is actually a surrogate for plutocracy, where the rich in
order to control society and become richer still co-opt or coerce other
sections of the populations in to their scheme of things by promising the
earth, sky, moon and the stars. … Politicians apparently pay lip service
to those sections of society that are in distress and chalk out a strategy much
like a macro-marketing strategy to draw the votes of those in distress.
So in India,
democracy is a plutocracy of people who become legislators by hook sometimes
and by crook oftentimes but claim to have the legitimate support of the people.

So is this peculiar to India then? The answer will
be an emphatic no. The answer is so emphatic not because I have any first
hand experience of politics in other countries but because I have studied the
evolution of modern day democracy. The Greeks equated democracy to mob
rule, it was only in the modern capitalist period that democracy found some
respect. The champions of modern capitalism such as John Locke and Adam
Smith were also champions of democracy, but they never believed in or advocated
the concept of Universal Suffrage or Universal Adult Franchise. What they
had advocated was a democratic plutocracy in which only the propertied and the
rich would have any rights and say in decision making for society. It is
for this reason that they advocated concepts of free markets and limited governments.
Over the years, some sections from the mobs that the Greek political
philosophers feared, were able to find their way into the process of democracy.
Once such people find entry into the democratic process, they lose no
time in dissociating themselves from the mobs to which they once belonged and
aspire to be plutocrats.

Therefore, theorists such as Hamza Alavi and Samir
Amin are right when they say that politicians constitute a separate class much
like the traditional intellectuals (to borrow a term from Antonio Gramsci)
think of themselves as a distinct class. The difference is that intellectuals
play around with words and concepts and feel gratified if somebody notices what
they say (they do not do anything, and I know I am implicating myself here even
though I don't see myself as an intellectual in anyway) while the politicians
find economic and financial gratification; something that is far more tangible. People's aspirations incidental to this grander scheme of politicians and
some benefits that sometimes get passed on to some people are also incidental
and just by products of the games that politicians play. To conclude
then, democracy is not will of the people, democracy is not fairness, democracy
is not justice, democracy is not empowerment of all; modern democracy is just a
new name, a legitimation for plutocracy and the furtherance of the agendas of
the rich, be they individuals or corporations.